A Community Engagement Statement is an official document that forms a component part of a planning submission. There are various statutory requirements regarding consultation in planning.

A Community Engagement Brief is a short (often draft) document that illustrates a plan, programme, part or component of a community engagement strategy. A scheme might have several briefs a various stages and these might change along the process.

Plans and programmes are important to inform officers, stakeholders and the public about how the engagement strategy will take place, where to find relevant information and when this will be available. Applicants might choose to set up a dedicated online platform to upload this information, so that all parties have access to the same information at the same time.

It is important to document the engagement process because this data should be incorporated into the agent’s Design and Access and/or Community Engagement Statement. But more crucially because the data should be fed back to participants who dedicated time and effort during the engagement process. The population has the right to understand how they have had an input in shaping their city.

5. Engagement briefs

Any Community Engagement Brief or Statement should have the following sections as a minimum criteria:

Outreach strategy

How events, contact details and opportunities to find information were strategically advertised so that all demographics have an opportunity to participate in the process.

Methods applied

How the different components of the engagement process were planned and why. How data was gathered, processed and fed back to the community.

Participation rates

How many people participated and how, the demographics of participants and a brief commentary on lessons learnt. This session aims to inform future consultations in the area and gain a better understanding of our communities.

Questions asked

What were the questions asked, why those questions were the most appropriate and how the responses were documented.

Results

Data emerging from the events and data analysis in the context of the proposed development.

Conclusions

Interpretation of the preliminary results in the context of the scheme/proposals and explanations of how these results have informed aspects of the scheme or changes to the proposals.

Engagement Criteria

5.1 Submit a brief at each stage of the design process (concept, developed, detailed) with the minimum criteria as indicated in the text above.

This document can be draft, it does not need to be a finished product as it is assumed that the engagement process will be flexible and might change along the way to adapt to community responses.